Less than 14% of Austrians would defend their country in event of attack: Survey

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) - Only 13.58% of Austrians would defend their country with arms in the event of an armed attack, according to a survey that has been ongoing since March.

The latest results of the survey were published on Monday on the website of the Austrian Foreign Policy Panel Project (AFP3).

The survey, which is conducted on behalf of the University of Innsbruck, explores the attitudes of Austrians toward foreign and security policy in a total of 75 questions with several hundred variables.

Since March, the results of the survey have been published thematically in order to present the results piece by piece on the AFP3 dashboard on the project's website.

According to the latest figures, although only 13.58 of Austrians say they would defend their country with a weapon in the event of an armed attack, 72% expect other EU countries to defend their country militarily.

According to the survey project, the Austrian population's willingness to defend itself is among the lowest in Europe and the world.

On its website, the project defines military preparedness as the "willingness of people to take up arms and defend their country in the event of an attack or to make another military contribution to defense, such as the production of war-related goods."

Martin Senn, scientific director of the project, explained to the Austrian daily Der Standard that the Austrian population "was not confronted with questions of security policy and solidarity for a long time."

As a neutral state, this has led to a "security-political disengagement," Senn continued.

Solidarity needs to be practiced, and that has simply not happened in Austria," he said.

According to Senn, solidarity is practiced in countries where a high level of readiness to serve in the army prevails, for example, through longer military service.

In Austria, on the other hand, the militia system has been reduced over the years, which is "the opposite of strengthening the solidarity muscle", he said.

In this context, the head of the study also pointed out that only a small proportion of respondents were prepared to take up arms themselves, but at the same time, 47% stated that Austria should defend itself militarily in the event of an attack.